I was first introduced to Taylor Swift via her debut song “Tim McGraw” on my local country music station back around 2006. I was one of only a few people I knew who listened to country (unsurprisingly, it wasn’t something that was very popular or relatable in my suburban neighborhood north of Seattle). My parents and carpool drivers weren’t fans, so I was left to listen on my own through the speakers of my purple boom box every day after school.
As the song played, I was immediately drawn to its melancholy and the mention of Tim McGraw, one of my favorite artists at the time. I was a doe-eyed seventh grader, a young hopeless romantic who had never been in a relationship (at least not a real one that lived outside of MSN Messenger or AIM) but dreamt of one, writing page after page in my journal of what it might be like. The song struck a chord with me, and all puns aside, amplified my longing for something I so desperately wanted to feel. But what truly sealed my fate was what the radio hosts said after the song was over: The singer, someone new to the scene named Taylor Swift, was only a few years older than I was.
The fact that she was so young made her achievements of getting on the radio and releasing an album somehow feel attainable. It felt a lot like when I first read The Outsiders earlier that year and learned S.E. Hinton was only 15 when she started writing it. I loved writing, I always had, and if they were so young and able to do what they did, maybe I could too. I immediately bought Taylor’s Tim McGraw album and listened to it on repeat, memorizing every word. To my delight, the inside of the CD cover housed every lyric and even had a secret code hidden behind a few sporadically capitalized letters. It felt like Shakespearean poetry (which I wouldn’t read until a few years later in high school), where the words held an encoding, a deeper meaning, if you looked closely enough. And much like Shakespeare, the songs mirrored human nature.
Even with limited romantic experience, I could relate to the feeling of wanting to be wanted.
There was, however, one thing I could not relate to — and herein lies the crux of my jealousy. It’s not just because she’s famous and fabulously wealthy, or because she’s gorgeous and best friends with Selena Gomez (the latter of which I am arguably most envious of). It’s because she’s never been ashamed of the way she feels.
Of course I don’t know this for a fact given I’ve never actually met her, but from the moment I first listened to her music, I felt like I knew her. I felt like I knew her because she let me — she let her lyrics tell her story and expose herself. Like me, she had written down every thought and wish into her journal. But unlike me, she had published them.
As time went on and Taylor became more mainstream and thus more successful, the more envious I became. I was frustrated with her Red album because of its obvious departure from her country roots, something I still felt connected to. She no longer had a twang, making me think of her as a fraud merely using the country music scene as a way to break into pop. And while this may be true in some regard, it’s clear that was she was ultimately doing was reinventing herself — something I couldn’t do. She was — and is—a fundamentally different person than me, not just because she was/is rich and famous, but because of something more significant:
She doesn’t cage her creativity.
Unlike me, she capitalizes on every creative instinct. I remember reading an article about her once near the beginning of her career that talked about how she can write a song in just a few minutes. It blew my mind, and honestly still does, but I believe it. She clearly hasn’t self-censored or quit before she’s even begun, two things that have become second nature to me and the primary reasons why I have so many half-finished drafts sitting in my Google Drive. Unlike me, she just lets it flow.
She lets it lead her in all sorts of new directions, seemingly never questioning where it will take her. And this faith, this blind trust, only takes her higher. Now on her wildly successful Eras Tour, she’s not only reliving her various personas and seasons of her life so far, but letting others witness it. She’s inviting the literal world to celebrate her changes throughout the years of her life, both the ups (i.e. Fearless, when she rose to fame) and downs (i.e. Reputation, when the drama got to her).
Yes, she makes an insane amount of money doing it, but it’s not easy to share your innermost thoughts, dreams, and fears with other people, let alone the general public—that much I know. You have to be so secure in yourself, so unafraid of the judgement, so completely vulnerable. You have to be, well, fearless.
And if Taylor Swift is any example, it’s worth it.
So yeah, I’m jealous of her. Can you blame me?